Candi Staton Interview Online at the Independent

Candi Staton: That heart still runs free

A career marked by alcoholism, abuse and some great music.

Preview of a interview where Gavin Martin talks to Candi Staton

Published: 06 April 2006

Eating her lunch in the lobby of the Holiday Inn in Camden, north London, Candi Staton - the 63-year-old survivor, heroine and sexual avenger of American deep soul - has made herself at home. Staton is a small, voluptuous woman, with the vitality you'd hope for in the lady famed for "Young Hearts Run Free", a British hit three times over. That's a distinction shared by her most recent chart entry, "You Got the Love", a collaboration with The Source. She's had her struggles, but her new album, His Hands, shows that her voice is still a marvel of brooding, quivering intensity. As she talks, her eyes sparkle; she speaks in warm, husky tones, full of zest, as she pours out her life story. Canzata Maria Staton was born in 1943 in Hanceville, Alabama - just in time to live through the pre-Civil Rights days of supremacist terror. "I was always afraid. A black man near us was castrated. I was worried for my brothers," she says. "With my own eyes, I've seen the Ku-Klux-Klan coming through our neighbourhood, carrying torches, with the white sheets on. I was frightened all the time...............

.............. may not sing the cheating songs any more, but music is still her refuge. "It was an escape when I was a child. I'd get lost in song, listening to the radio, and when the blues and gospel stations stopped, the country stations came on. I loved it all. But I never wanted to sound like anyone else. If I felt I was like Aretha or Gladys Knight, I'd quickly go back into myself and pull out me. I wanted to find my own expression in song; that's why I always stuck with me.......

link to the full article (checked 2015)

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article356100.ece